Department of bad graphs

I try to be pretty careful with my charts and graphs, but I made a mistake this morning when I graphed Vanity Fair's poll showing that most people can't confidently explain the public option. Google Spreadsheet began the Y axis at 20 percent, and I didn't notice. As commenter Volpevi pointed out, that "biased this graph to over exaggerate the relative size of 'No' response ... Thus it appears as if the No's outweigh Yes's by almost a factor of 8. When in reality it's only about 2.5. (66 vs 26)." Here's how the graph should look:

Haha, I was complaining about that graph for exactly that reason. I knew better than to doubt your dedication to the presentational data arts, but I'm glad you took the opportunity to turn it into a PSA.

That said, I don't really get why they manipulated the original that way, though, since it's already a really striking gap. Fudging the margins to make it seem even vaster just hurts your credibility.

Google is not alone in setting up the axis like that. The thing is, it's not really the software vendors' fault; the requirements I've seen indicate the customers want that behavior. This makes it a case of the customer always being right, even when objectively wrong.